The Book Olympics
What if there were an Olympics for books. One would probably be correct in assuming that the events in a Book Olympics would not be as enjoyable a spectacle as seeing the charismatic Bolt in full flight or cheering on your own country in their pursuit of medals. A Book Olympics would surely require a competing book’s performance to be judged over the entire duration of its life. Here are some possible Book Olympic events and results:
The High Jump – (highest number of book sales)
Athlete Coach Total Points (Sales)
Gold: A Tale of Two Cities Charles Dickens 200m
Silver: The Lord of The Rings J.R.R Tolkien 150m
Bronze: The Hobbit J.R.R Tolkien 100m
(These results were compiled by ranker.com)
The Long Jump – (longest book in the English language)
Athlete Coach Metres (No of words)
Gold: Mission Earth L.Ron Hubbard 1.2m
Silver: Sironia, Texas Madison Cooper 1.1m
Bronze: Clarissa Samuel Richardson 969k
(These results are courtesy of listverse.com)
Please note that I have disqualified a Mark Leach book, which purportedly has 17m words. The reason being that Mark seemingly wrote this monologue with the sole purpose of being the author of the longest book. In my opinion this performance enhanced result is not in the spirit of the Book Olympics.
Individual Mentions
Best Athlete of 2012
Winner – Fifty Shades of Grey (E L James)
This probably didn’t come as a surprise to anyone. Nearly 40m copies of this book have been sold so far and it’s only one part of a trilogy. The author has no plans to return to her day job anytime soon.
Worst Performing Competitor Ever (Award) 
Winner – BIRTH CONTROL IS SINFUL IN THE CHRISTIAN MARRIAGES and Also ROBBING GOD OF PRIESTHOOD CHILDREN!! by ELIYZABETH YANNE STRONG-ANDERSON.
Please note the winner was selected not by me but by the popular author Michael N.Marcus in his book Stinkers.
I was keen to read the book myself but due to its cost (£113.92) I decided against it. The reason for it being chosen as the winner in its category includes but is not limited to:
- Every letter in book capitalised
- Ridden with grammatical errors
- Ludicrous subject matter
- Excessive price tag
- Neurotic nature of its author
Up an
d Coming Athlete
Charles Middleworth by Guy Portman (that’s me by the way). This humorous tale of the unexpected is available through Amazon in paperback and on Kindle (£1.96).
